


Ascent

by ridorana



Category: Final Fantasy XII
Genre: Angst, M/M, Spoilers, healer!vaan, late-game vaan being done with balthier's bs, takes place in the Pharos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-06
Updated: 2017-07-06
Packaged: 2018-11-28 11:39:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11417190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ridorana/pseuds/ridorana
Summary: What brought them together is still too young, too fresh a thing in the span of their years; nostalgia is not the right word to describe the memories, no, but in their short lives this journey has been long. The desert boy in the blue shadows of the lighthouse is a beacon Balthier never thought he needed until Vaan shone so bright that it occurred to him, all at once, that he's been flying in the dark this entire time. They have traveled so far since the night he threw the brat off a parapet, and not simply by tangible distance alone.Indulging in the reverie of those days will get them nowhere now, but he doesn't say it.A moment in the Pharos.





	Ascent

_“I am the leading man. Might need to do something heroic.”_

 

The darkness in The Pharos at Ridorana is full of echoes and confusion. Words and magick ricochet wildly all around them; incantations mesh together when more than one person casts, leaving spells weaker in the lack of clarity - an ally may sound like they’re near, but end up being much further away - the undead groan, the Mistmares rush, and outside it all, the Cataract roars around the lighthouse. The party of seven hack through the maze and darkness with seamless precision, a rhythm that took long to fall into but feels familiar now. As they climb upwards, their challenges thicken; the halls scream of blade, magick, Esper, bone, and the sun feels a distant memory in this place.

But it’s those words that hang heavy in Vaan’s head like an anchor pulling him below the Cataract's hungry rush. And as they climb, he cannot shake them from his core. As they climb, the words repeat again, louder, longer, and he has unraveled them at least eighty different ways by the time they’re only two hours up the monolith. The words churn inside him like fire and ice until he feels nausea climbing from his belly to his throat. He isn’t sure what Balthier means, and yet he has never been more sure of anything in his life. The juxtaposition pries at Vaan until he is teased apart, a mess. He's amazed he can still cast at this point.  

A heavy coldness permeates the innards of the Lighthouse. It feels akin to Nabudis but is somehow a much different breed altogether; an ancient power thrums through the labyrinth, seeping out, breathing of ice and ghosts. The pillars glow. Black orbs hum and blind. Water spits cold droplets that provide no relief, pulled from the sea of Jagd itself. Vaan wonders if everything in here that rattles and creaks is here because it died in this climb, only to be bound in here for eternity. Around him he feels every ounce of death in the souls that haunt the walls. He shivers, and presses on, flanking the party with his hands that crack from the strain of white magick; for this half of the climb, he heals. 

With Balthier’s words gnawing at his core, the sky pirate becomes the primary focus of Vaan’s magick, and he makes no show to hide it. Nearly every moment a foe targets him, Vaan is ready with a Curaga - it is not so hard, now, to conjure it in such spurts. He lets the man's words from earlier stew within him until he uncoils the tension in his healing, like a sigh, like cracking knuckles. The white magick is alive inside of Vaan and seems to put his nausea at bay; it fills him with warmth and purpose and he feels lighter still. Balthier has not missed Vaan's clear intentions to keep an eye on him, as he finally gives Vaan a _look_ when a fiend barely scratches him yet another Curaga is sent his way. 

"Attentive, are we?" he murmurs later over the grind of the ancient lift which pulls them higher. Water spatters at Vaan from the heart of the Lighthouse and he stares into the rushing current spiraling slow and deadly around them. 

"Someone's gotta be," Vaan bites back. He does not stumble when the lift reaches the next point and rumbles to a pause, but he grips his spear tight until his knuckles are pale.

"I need no coddling, Vaan." 

Vaan wants to respond right then and there - the anger feels swift and rises within him like the furl of Arise, breathing life into words that speak of death. But Ashe's holy blade grinds against the stone as she winds it up to slice through an ambush of skeletons that greet them at the newest Ascent, and they fight again like animals in a ring. 

"Look sharp," Balthier calls to the party as he blasts through the helm of a skull. "The Occuria are our ever-watchful audience. Let's make sure we give them a show, shall we?"

"They seek to test us," Reddas says as the bones shatter to the ground. "Do not underestimate the task ahead."

Balthier laughs something bitter.

"You underestimate the many tasks felled in our wake, if you assume we are foolish enough underestimate this."

"How many more floors?" Penelo asks, uncorking an Ether. Vaan wipes cold sweat from his forehead.

"I cannot say," Reddas admits, and so Penelo looks to Fran who scents the air.

"The mist has been pure since we arrived, thick and unrelenting; I cannot sense its strength when it has peaked since the shore."

When Penelo offers Vaan half the Ether bottle, he takes it, and drinks it fast enough that he cannot linger on the taste; there had been no time for Balthier to mix his own for Vaan and thus Balfonheim's pre-packaged had to do. It lingers in his throat, viscous and bitter. He leaves the bottle on the floor, not entirely keen on picking up after himself if the Occuria were going to be so rude; he's pretty certain the last pillar simply called them all idiot-children, so he leaves his garbage next to their kill and they climb onwards. 

Ashe is oddly quiet but it is she who reads the pillars with Basch at her side. When riddles prove too thick, Fran joins them, and weaves apart the Occurian tangle like gnarled thread. It goes on like this for many hours. How many, Vaan cannot tell. They do not see the light until he's forgotten what it looks like, until they finally reach an Ascent where the sky bleeds through pillars that soak in the sun. He takes in a deep lungful of air, but finds it tastes no different; it still is heavy with must even as the sky stretches beyond the stone.

The paths open like puzzle pieces glowing and singing with each step of their feet, a chime similar to Giruvegan's glyphs. When another pillar mocks them with stanzas and riddles, it promises dire consequence if their demand is failed.

"The Occuria challenge our memory here," Fran warns in front of several Waystones of varying colors. "If we misstep, they speak of a punishment."

Amidst the confusion, the exhaustion, they indeed misstep; the waystone order that they touch does not bring them higher. Rather, it spits them into an enclosed platform for an ambush that does not seem to end. The tiles birth from them fiend after fiend, rising to challenge them until the seven warriors are surrounded by twofold.

"Is _this_ the punishment?!" Vaan yells over the sound of a Zombie's groan too close for comfort; he twists his spear just so until it pierces its flesh, but the Sap has already hit, and the world feels slow. Penelo whimpers nearby and presses her back to Vaan's as they take on wave after wave of undead.

"This is a torture chamber," Penelo nearly wails, hitting a fiend with a fire spell that makes Vaan proud. It thuds to the ground, only for another to join its place, rattling and croaking. 

"Not exactly earning high marks for originality, are they?" Balthier echoes, and Vaan wants to say the same for _him_ but his mouth is full of Esunaga.

"Less talking, more fighting!" Ashe demands, slicing with exasperation through the ambush with her holy blade that fells everything in her path. It is by her sword-arm that a path clears enough way for them to move. 

 _Space,_ Vaan thinks. _I need space to cast_. He curses; he can't do anything when he's in the middle of it all, can't see anything, can't keep tabs on everyone like _this_. Vaan backpedals and sidesteps with a composed agility he's polished from countless battles throughout these months, eyes scanning the party wildly and straining to catch wind of who is injured. Around him the undead manifest and reek of rotted flesh and cold metal. Cold, everything is cold. The sound of battle here in the Pharos is a kaleidoscope of cacophony and makes Vaan's head thrum. He focuses on his comrades, focuses on his magick, and anchors himself in his casts.

His eyes wander to Balthier, who backs slowly towards a pillar as he readies the Fomalhaut with fatal surety. Vaan watches him like a Coeurl. The words play again in his head:

_If something untoward should happen to me, you're taking the Strahl._

In an instant, Balthier is all Vaan can see. There are no fiends, there is no Sun-Cryst, there are no self-styled Gods. There is only a man Vaan has come to know in this long journey that has happened in such short a time, and though Vaan's body moves autonomously to fight he does not tear his eyes away from the pirate.

They've been through too much together. They all have, and he's not letting Balthier off the hook with that line. Vaan will unearth the meaning behind that from the depths of his throat if it kills him.

A Mistmare begins to manifest behind Balthier, deathly ethereal, and by the time it does Balthier only stumbles once before blasting through it with a grunt. It rears, pushing its hooves towards him with joyful savagery, and at the instant it throws him backwards Vaan hits him with a Curaga. Balthier catches his breath in one, two, three moments, and by the time he realizes which way is up, the Mistmare has vanished. It does not return.

The silence in the wake of the ambush is near deafening, and all they can do is breathe. In the distance there is a thud where the locked doors were once held fast but ease open for them now. Balthier searches the glowing blue darkness and finds Vaan’s eyes unwavering on his form, wide and searching and _cold_.

"Is it over?" Vaan’s throat burns with the strain of his white magick that he has been shouting above the sickening sounds of blade and blood for hours; he’s covered in a sheen of perspiration that leaves the ends of his hair heavy and stuck to his face.

"Let's get out of this place before we find out," Penelo leans against him, shuddering, and they head back to where they began before their folly. 

“We stop here. Rest. Regroup. We have far more that awaits us,” Reddas offers the team, and with no dispute even from the Princess herself, they take a much needed break in a hallway they managed to purge. Ashe and Basch re-read the pillar's challenge again and quietly discuss the Waystone order. Fran soon joins them.

Here, Balthier pulls Vaan aside to a dark corner around a purged bend.

“Need we have yet another word?” he asks, a quiet edge to his voice. Vaan looks at him and his gray eyes hold a cold, incredulous lividity. Even his voice is quiet, unnervingly so, further down the hall to be in eyeshot of the party but far enough away to not be heard. 

“Down there. By the anchor. What did you mean? Untoward?” 

Balthier sits along the edge of the wall with an audible sigh - he too is grateful for the rest -and adjusts his shin guard in a brilliant show of avoiding eye contact. “Untoward means—“

“ _I know what it means_. What did _you_ mean.” There is no lilt to Vaan’s voice. His question sounds like a terrified, delicate demand. From paces away, Fran glances at them, though she needn’t. Vaan is well aware at this point now that the Viera can and will listen to whatever they speak of. And at this point, Vaan hardly cares.

Balthier clears his throat and his eyes skit about before landing on Vaan’s; he regards the Dalmascan before him with a crooked grin. “Like I said,” he drawls, “I may need to do something heroic. I  _am_  the—“

“Cut the crap, Balthier.” Vaan snaps loudly, and the stone bounces it back in twisted ways, echoing a voice that does not sound like his. He rounds on the pirate like an angry Lobo. “This  _Leading Man_  thing, drop it. It was fine for a while but you can’t go around doing reckless crap just because of some act. You can't just -- you can't just say stuff like that to me and act like it's nothing. I don’t know who you think you’re trying to fool at this point because it’s not Fran and it sure as hell better not be me. I need answers and I need them now. This entire place has been nothing but one giant riddle after the next. I can’t have you be one too.” The words spill out of him as if he’d been stewing in them for hours while climbing a seemingly endless tower made by Gods - and what a coincidence indeed.

As Vaan speaks, Balthier’s grin turns to a grimace and there is a dark crease in the furrow of his brow. He stands, grabs Vaan’s wrist to yank him around the immediate corner, and presses the thief against the wall; Vaan’s grunt is lost in the force with which he was pushed. Balthier’s voice is a low hiss.

“Allow me to try and spell it out for you, then.” He tilts his chin low and speaks to Vaan darkly. “I joined this folly out of a morbid curiosity, insatiable existential restlessness, a promise of priceless treasure, and a hell of a lot of entertainment.” Each word comes out with an edge sharper than the last, but Vaan doesn’t flinch. “It soon became quite clear to me that my involvement with this venture could not be limited to observation alone, and that soon became  _crystal_ once my father’s involvement reared its ugly head yet again from a past I long since severed myself from. I’m nearly positive we’ll be seeing what’s left of that madman on the top of this gods-bedamned  _hellscape_  and when we do, I will be the one to stop him at a cost I’ve come to terms with long ago. Have I made myself transparent enough to you so that  _by the mist_  you may cease your tantrum?”

Vaan’s hair falls in front of his eyes, laden with sweat, and he stares at Balthier with the same lividity he did earlier. And then, much in Vaan fashion of being explicitly explained something in extreme depth, proceeds to act as though he hadn’t heard a word.

“I’m not going to let anything happen to you.” He states it lowly, above a whisper but still meant only for Balthier’s ears. And Fran too, who probably heard the entire exchange from around the corner.

Balthier is exhausted and the altitude makes him dizzy. Vaan isn't helping; the Dalmascan pours unabashed honesty into every gesture and it pulls the pirate apart at the seams. “Vaan, I've no intention of dying - that's not on my agenda." Here he summons a grin, however fragile, "The Leading Man never dies. However, I _am_ prepared to make sacrifice if need be - whatever that may be. That's what you must understand." In any other situation, Vaan thinks Balthier would have more tact - but at this point the pirate just murmurs in what must be a shoddy attempt at good humor, "Though things considered, my death would give you a mighty fine airship.”

It is not, however, funny. Not at all.

“ _I don’t want your stupid airship, Balthier_!” Vaan’s voice is a shout here, immediate and unrelenting. This time there’s no Cure waiting at Vaan’s fingertips as he shoves the pirate back. It almost looks like he’s about to cry, the way his face scrunches and lip curls. “And if that’s the only reason you wanna teach me to fly the damn thing then I’ll crash it into the Naldoan sea for all I care and you can haunt it like the sailors stories in Balfonheim do, so  _fuck you_.” The silence that follows is near defeating, is so taut that Penelo could likely do acrobatics along it. They stare at each other like this for several long stretched moments, catching breaths they didn’t know they needed.

“Vaan,” Balthier starts slowly and steadily, as if he were approaching a mineshaft, but his voice is softer now despite the tightness in his throat and tension in his jaw, “You have to let me do what I need to do.”

Vaan’s indignant Dalmascan orphan tendencies kick into overdrive here, and he doesn’t skip a beat.

“I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to.” Vaan leans in, and this time his voice is slow and succinct. “I didn’t come all this way to watch you  _die_.” He spits the final word like venom and it makes his voice crack low in his throat. “I came all this way, all this way with you, and Fran, with Ashe and Penelo and Basch, to make sure no one else does.” His breath is shaky now and he steps towards Balthier to take the pirate’s shirtcuff between his thumb and forefinger weakly. Only here, alone in the dark, does Vaan dare. 

“You… You need to get over the fact I’m gonna protect you. Like I would Pen. Like you do Fran.” Vaan’s voice strains to a near-plead at the end of his tirade and fingers brush against the man’s hand so quickly that Balthier could have imagined it. He’s trying every channel to reach the pirate and finds each one closed off from barricades built long ago, barricades he is not unused to at this point in their journey, barricades that aren’t enough to scare off a war orphan starved for the sky.

For months Vaan’s been picking at these pieces Balthier has long-built, experimenting different avenues from which to dismantle them from the inside out. Some days have proven more fruitful than others; alone together in airship lessons, hands lingering too long on each other’s until finally, finally, lips did too, and then hands, and--and then everything. Some nights prove fruitful too, in his cabin of the Strahl where the darkness is warm and the feeling of the pirate’s rings tracing the steady bumps of Vaan’s spine lulls him to sleep against Balthier’s chest. Mornings even, the moments half-between awake and asleep, and Vaan swears, he really swears in moments like those that he’s really making progress here, when Balthier’s sleep-laden smile greets Vaan and the day. It’s enough to make him sick right now, the churning in his stomach furling up again into his throat.

These are vignettes Vaan remembers here, in the icy air of the Pharos, and he tries to find that same Balthier now to a hard-pressed avail. What brought them together is still too young, too fresh a thing in the span of their years; nostalgia is not the right word, no, but in their short lives this journey has been long. The desert boy in the blue shadows of the lighthouse is a beacon Balthier never thought he needed until Vaan shone so bright that it occurred to him, all at once, that he's been flying in the dark this entire time. They have traveled so far since the night he threw the brat off a parapet, and not simply by tangible distance alone.

Indulging in the reverie of those days will get them nowhere now. Vaan knows. Balthier knows, too. But neither of them say it. The pirate is looking at him in a twisted expression and his jaw remains tight. Vaan realizes those moments he holds so dear are outside with the sky. Here, there are only shadows and mist. There is only the cold, dark Pharos, with ascent upon ascent, and the inevitable waiting for them at the top.

Balthier only releases a long, composed breath from his nostrils.

“Flattering though it is, Vaan, I never asked for this.”

Here, Vaan’s hand drops from Balthier’s. He flips his hair from over his face and reveals a crinkle in his eyes that mirror a grin, however hollow. He’s forcing it and it shows.

“I know. You never had to. That’s what makes me so great. Listen,” he starts earnestly - they haven’t much time, “I’ll take the Strahl if you’re in a pinch. If you’re hurt. Pen and I, we got this. You both taught us well. But it’ll still be yours. I don’t want it. So don’t go off dying.” His eyes beg the older man for one fleeting moment before he lightens half-heartedly and adds, “Because if you do, I’m taking the Strahl, renaming it  _The Salty Bangaa_  and turning it into a traveling rehearsal space for really bad wannabe actors. So think twice about that.” 

Balthier rubs at the corners of his eyes but can’t hide the rueful smile so often warranted to Vaan’s company. “So much for resting in peace.”

There’s some semblance of a victory here in Vaan’s grin when he looks at Balthier. “Exactly. Now c’mon. Let’s go not die.” Here, Vaan tugs on the rumpled linen of Balthier’s sleeve as they head back towards the party. The pirate follows.

“Indeed. Let’s go  _not die_.” 

“Now you're talkin'. That's the spirit.” 

They climb onwards still.


End file.
